Mark Pellegrino Movies
In this suspenseful drama, a disbarred lawyer forgoes the writing of his own book in favor of taking credit for that of a writer who is murdered shortly after giving the attorney his unpublished manuscript to read. A murder-mystery, the book becomes a best-seller and once again the former lawyer finds himself at the top -- until the circumstances of the real writer's death and a series of other deaths lead police to accuse him of being a serial killer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tom Berenger, (more)
- 1996
This black comedy/psychodrama makes grim fun of Hollywood acting schools and their clients. Set at the title coach's school, the story centers on Aaron Gillespie's latest batch of students, each of whom has a physical anomaly for him to exploit and sadistically berate while ostensibly "teaching" them all about Stanislovski and Method techniques for acting. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Gretchen Mol and Cameron Bright star in director William Sten Olsson's period drama set in 1963, which details the friendship between a John F. Kennedy paramour and her 13-year-old neighbor. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gretchen Mol, Cameron Bright, (more)
- 1993
In this awful black comedy, an aging bank robber tries to pull off one final caper. Things go awry and he ends up staying in a raunchy hotel. The crime is well-publicized, but fortunately the equally seedy residents there keep mum. Unfortunately, they are determined to literally nickel and dime him to death by making him pay dearly for even the smallest favors. Things look bleak until a kindly hooker falls in love with him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Dempsey, Lisa Bonet, (more)
- 1990
Billy Zane stars in this direct-to-video gem as a spectacularly unsuccessful car thief. Hoping to reform by leaving LA, Zane must scare up $400 worth of exit money. He decides to pull off one last job, stealing a TV from William Bastiani. An ill-tempered criminal, Bastiani stabs Zane, who then runs off blindly into a cemetary ("Blood" and "Concrete": get it?) Weaving around the tombstones, Zane makes the acquaintance of would-be suicide Jennifer Beals. Love blooms, but it might be too late for both of them: Bastiani is found murdered, and Zane is suspect number one-forcing him to hide out from both the cops and the mob. Luxuriating in its tawdriness and cheapness, Blood & Concrete: A Love Story actually has an offbeat charm all its own. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Billy Zane, Jennifer Beals, (more)
- 1997
14-year-old Holly Nolan (Gina Philips) lives unhappily with her hyperjudgmental mother Donna (Talia Shire) and her brother Ted (Eddie Mills). To escape the pressures of her home life and make herself feel important, Holly begins hanging out with an older crowd, and in the course of events falls in love with 19-year-old Chris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) an Army reservist who has been disowned by his family. When Donna violently objects to Holly's romance with Chris, the couple elope and head off to Calfornia, certain that all they need to survive in the "outside" world is their love for each other. But it isn't enough: Repeatedly battered down by disillusionment and deprivation, Holly and Chris can't even return to her home town, where Chris faces charges for being AWOL--and, thanks to Holly's vengeful mother, for statutory rape. With apparently no other alternative, Chris resorts to the "easiest" way to stay alive, becoming a male prostitute on the mean streets of LA. Innovative direction and a driving musical score featuring such artists as Van Halen, Peter Himmelman, Lisa Cerbone and Sarah McLaughlin) helps sustain the viewers' interest and fascination in this sordid (but not sordidly told) made-for-TV movie. Born Into Exile made its NBC network debut on March 17, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A cozy coffeehouse serves as the setting for director John Cosgrove's over-caffeinated tale of sexual peccadilloes and complicated relationships starring Mena Suvari, Katherine Heigl, and Breckin Meyer. It's a typical lunch hour in London, and The Black Cat Café is fast filling up with patrons whose sexual lives have become a tangled web of infidelity, kinky idiosyncrasies, and betrayal. Stoned on some of the most potent weed in jolly old England, a neurotic young commitment-phobe attempts to keep his cool when he has an unexpected run-in with his bitter ex-girlfriend. But he's not the only one whose secrets are about to come out today, because after a shy young lady is forced to fend off a boorish blind date whose preconception of her couldn't be more wrong, a possessive boyfriend discovers that his current girlfriend was once a well-known adult film star. Later, after a fragile old lady mistakes a patron for the ex-husband she once found in a compromising position with a kinky prostitute and a high-powered attorney discovers that her husband-to-be likes to dress in ladies' clothes, the manager's boyfriend claims that a recent ménage à trois is perfectly forgivable since it was conducted with a pair of identical twins. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mena Suvari, Marsha Thomason, (more)
The creation of one of the most memorable books of the 1960s -- and the impact the writing and research would have on its author -- is explored in this drama based on a true story. In 1959, Truman Capote (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was a critically acclaimed novelist who had earned a small degree of celebrity for his work when he read a short newspaper item about a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. For some reason, the story fascinated Capote, and he asked William Shawn (Bob Balaban), his editor at The New Yorker, to let him write a piece about the case. Capote had long believed that in the right hands, a true story could be molded into a tale as compelling as any fiction, and he believed this event, in which the brutal and unimaginable was visited upon a community where it was least expected, could be just the right material. Capote traveled to Kansas with his close friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), herself becoming a major literary figure with the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, and while Capote's effete and mannered personal style stuck out like a sore thumb in Kansas, in time he gained the trust of Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent investigating the murder of the Clutter family, and with his help Capote's magazine piece grew into a full-length book. Capote also became familiar with the petty criminals who killed the Clutter family, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), and in Smith he found a troubling kindred spirit more like himself than he wanted to admit. After attaining a sort of friendship with Smith under the assumption that the man would be executed before the book was ever published, Capote finds himself forced to directly confront the moral implications of his actions with regards to both his role in the man's death, and the way that he would be remembered. Capote also co-stars Bruce Greenwood as Capote's longtime companion Jack Dunphy, and Amy Ryan as Mary Dewey, Alvin's wife who became a confidante of Capote's. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, (more)
Charles Bronson, weary and comatose, is trotted out again as the cocked crusader Paul Kersey in Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. Director Michael Winner has jumped ship for this installment, replaced by J. Lee Thompson (who has seen better days). Kersey is back in L.A. and dating attractive reporter Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz). Of course, the clock is ticking, and the gong goes off when Karen's daughter overdoses on crack. Before you can say "kaboom" the drug dealer, along with a large cast of bit players, are blown to bits by the single-minded vigilante. An enterprising publisher whose own daughter has died from a drug overdose hires Kersey to wipe out the city's two rival drug dealers and their legions of flunkies. Kersey has no trouble agreeing, and using the technique limned in Yojimbo, he methodically eliminates gang members, first from one side and then the other, until one gang's paranoia about the other gang causes the two competitors to engage in a major confrontation that impacts both groups. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Bronson, Kay Lenz, (more)
- 2008
The title represents much more of an unfulfilled desire than an actualization: for IRA accomplice Sean (David Polcyn) - who participated in a bombing that went grossly awry - nothing could be more perfect than "losing himself" in America. It represents a chance to bury the messiness of what transpired and lose his criminal history. But that may be easier said than done. As the tale opens, three men help smuggle Sean into the United States, bringing him into Oakland, California one fog-bound morning. Horrifyingly, he soon realizes that his "deliverers" are in fact subjugators: one intends to use him as a pawn in stateside drug operations. Sean thus begins to comb his situation for a means of escape, but it gradually dawns on him that this may be close to impossible. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- AnnaMarie Wayne, David Polcyn, (more)
Rage, jealousy, murder, and Eastern European automotive engineering combine in this offbeat black comedy. Verplanck, NY, is a small town north of Manhattan that has the dubious distinction of being the Yugo capital of America; the ill-fated import compact was first test-marketed in Verplanck, and nearly everyone in town drives one. So no one finds it unusual when a yellow Yugo is seen floating in the river, though seeing someone trapped inside is out of the ordinary. Verplanck's chief of police, Wyatt Rash (Danny De Vito), discovers that the deceased driver was a prominent local citizen, Mona Dearly (Bette Midler), and the evidence suggests that Mona's death was no accident. But the investigation into Mona's murder is hampered by one rather significant detail: nearly everyone in town hated Mona and wanted her dead. She alienated her son Jeff (Marcus Thomas) and his business partner Bobby (Casey Affleck). Bobby's girlfriend Ellen (Neve Campbell) (who is also Rash's daughter) is convinced that Mona would have tried to drive a wedge into their relationship. Mona's husband Phil (William Fichtner) couldn't stand her and fell into an affair with Rona (Jamie Lee Curtis), the waitress at the local diner. And even Rash's sidekick, Deputy Feege (Peter Dobson), spent too much time on the wrong end of Mona's temper to care that she's dead. Before long, the question is no longer who is a suspect, but who isn't? Drowning Mona was directed by Nick Gomez, who earned positive notices for his independent films New Jersey Drive and Illtown. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, (more)
- 1996
Benton (Eriq La Salle) strongly suspects that Vucelich (Ron Rifkin) is manipulating the results of his study on the "clamp-and-run" procedure. Elsewhere, rumors buzz throughout the ER that Greene (Anthony Edwards) and Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) are lovers. And Carter (Noah Wyle) risks his career when he goes ballistic while dealing with an alcoholic patient named Nathan (Mark Pellegrino) and Nathan's "enabler" girlfriend, Angel (Charlotte Ross). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Naomi Watts produces and stars in Ellie Parker, a semi-autobiographical story of an Australian actress struggling to make it in Hollywood. Ellie is young enough to still schlep to auditions back and forth across L.A., changing wardrobes and slapping on makeup en route, but just old enough that the future feels "more like a threat than a promise." She lives with her vacant musician boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino), who leaves her just about as dissatisfied as any other part of her life, and has a loose definition of the word "fidelity." Helping make sense of their surreal and humiliating Hollywood existence is her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg), another out-of-work actress trying her hand at design, who attends acting classes with Ellie to stay sharp. When Ellie gets into a fender bender with a guy who claims he's a cinematographer (Scott Coffey), her perspective on her work and the dating world starts to change. Chevy Chase also makes an appearance in this series of Hollywood vignettes, playing Ellie's agent. Watts, Coffey, and Pellegrino all worked together on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, where Watts had her breakout performance, and Ellie Parker grew out of the friendship forged between Watts and director/screenwriter Coffey. It was shot on digital video over the course of five years, having begun its life as a series of shorts featuring Watts' character. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Naomi Watts, Rebecca Rigg, (more)
Rita Rizzoli (Whoopi Goldberg) is a crusading narcotics cop assigned to track down the source of some killer crack cocaine in this pretentious and preachy anti-drug crime drama. Rita poses as a prostitute and is soon hot after two small-time hoods (Brad Dourif and Mike Jolly) who murder their way up the drug-dealing ladder in hopes of becoming kingpins. Cheech Marin and Catherine Blore provide interesting cameos in this feature that co-stars Ruben Blades and Sam Elliott. Contains stereotypical characters and gratuitous violence. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Whoopi Goldberg, Sam Elliott, (more)
- 1990
After accidentally killing his supplier, teenage drug addict Gil Reynolds (Tim Griffin) absconds with $250,000 belonging to the dead man's boss. Later on, Gil is found murdered, and his brother John (Mark Pellegrino) swears vengeance. This makes the job facing Hunter (Fred Dryer) all the more complex: not only must he nab Gil's killer and recover the money, but he must also prevent John from committing a desperate act that will ruin his life. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Superstars Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return with director Richard Donner for Lethal Weapon 3, the third in the phenomenally successful action series. In this film, Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) is only eight days away from retirement and his partner Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) once again manages to get them both into hot water with the both LAPD and the bad guys, who this time are Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson) and a gang of hoodlums selling armor-piercing bullets. Joe Pesci returns as the fast-talking schmuck Leo Getz. A new addition to the cast is Rene Russo as Lorna Cole, a sergeant from internal affairs sent to investigate Riggs and Murtaugh, but who ultimately ends up falling in love with the caffienated Riggs. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, (more)
- 2000
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Leslie Jordan writes and stars in this autobiographical account of being gay and drug-addled in 1970s Atlanta. The film opens with the protagonist known only as Storyteller (Jordan) meeting his maker after a drug overdose and trying to explain the sorry state of his former life. Rewind 20 years, when our hero, styling himself as a lilliputian dandy à la Truman Capote, leaves home for Atlanta -- dubbed the "San Francisco of the South." There he meets debutante refugee and drug connoisseur "Miss Make-Do" (Erin Chandler) who introduces him to the wonderful world of chemicals and the film's titular hotel -- a low-rent Chelsea-like dive. After his benefactress kicks him out for taking up with a thuggish coke dealer, the hapless fop protagonist finds another protector in Tripper -- a roughneck junkie, ex-con, and pimp. The two form a weird platonic and dependent relationship that eventually spirals into an opiate oblivion. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leslie Jordan, Erin Chandler, (more)
David Lynch wrote and directed this look at two women who find themselves walking a fine line between truth and deception in the beautiful but dangerous netherworld of Hollywood. A beautiful woman (Laura Elena Harring) riding in a limousine along Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive is targeted by a would-be shooter, but before he can pull the trigger, she is injured when her limo is hit by another car. The woman stumbles from the wreck with a head wound, and in time makes her way into an apartment with no idea of where or who she is. As it turns out, the apartment is home to an elderly woman who is out of town, and is allowing her niece Betty (Naomi Watts) to stay there; Betty is a small-town girl from Canada who wants to be an actress, and her aunt was able to arrange an audition with a film director for her. Betty befriends the injured woman, who begins calling herself "Rita" after seeing a poster of Rita Hayworth. While Betty's audition impresses a casting agent, and she catches the eye of hotshot director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), Kesher's producers and moneymen insist with no small vehemence that he instead cast a woman named Camilla Rhodes. As Rita attempts to put the pieces of her life back together, she pulls the name Diane Selwyn from her memory; Rita thinks it could be her real name, but when she and Betty find a listing for Diane Selwyn and visit her apartment, they discover the latest victim of a mysterious killer who is eluding police detective Harry McKnight (Robert Forster). Rita's emotional identity soon takes a left turn, and it turns out that neither woman is quite who she once appeared to be. David Lynch originally conceived Mulholland Drive as the pilot film for a television series; after the ABC television network rejected the pilot and declined to air it, the French production film StudioCanal took over the project, and Lynch reshot and re-edited the material into a theatrical feature. The resulting version of Mulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where David Lynch shared Best Director honors with Joel Coen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, (more)
- 2002
In the first half of NYPD Blue's ninth-season finale, no sooner have Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) and Connie McDowell (Charlotte Ross) returned from Disney World than they join the rest of the 15th precinct in a case involving a missing four-year-old boy. At first, it seems as though the youngster has fallen victim to an online sexual predator, but before long, several other possible suspects come to surface. Elsewhere, gay cop John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup) inherits a huge amount of money from his late long-estranged father. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Simmons
- 2002
In the concluding half of NYPD Blue's ninth-season finale, a baffling case involving an apparently murdered 12-year-old child takes yet another twist when a surprising new suspect looms on the horizon. Meanwhile, another homicide case is investigated, this one involving a man named Larry Tyner (Ted Marcoux), who claims to be a serial rapist despite the fact that everyone who knows Larry thinks the world of him. And still reeling from a plethora of personal crises and setbacks, Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) draws up papers to make certain that his son Theo (Austin Majors) will have a legal guardian "just in case." Finally, John Clark Sr. (Joe Spano) admits that he loves his son John Jr. (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) -- to everyone but John Jr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Simmons
- 1998
The mutilated body of a woman is found, and the principal suspects are her two sons. Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) tries to figure out if the guilty party is the son who shows no remorse or the one lost in a haze of drugs and alcohol. When one of the suspects kills himself, Andy wonders if the dead man could serve as a heart donor for the still-ailing Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits). Meanwhile, Lt. Fancy (James McDaniel) locates another possible donor -- a brain-dead cop whose grieving wife may not grant permission. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1997
During a home invasion, a wife and baby are killed, but the husband is only wounded. Smelling a rat, Simone (Jimmy Smits) and Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) work hand in hand with retired cop Gotelli (Carmine Caridi), now an insurance investigator, to determine if the husband arranged the killings to collect a hefty life-insurance policy. Also, Harvey Boutier (Dick Anthony Williams), a terminally ill friend of Lt. Fancy (James McDaniel), shows up at the precinct with new information on a 15-year-old murder case. And finally, the squad investigates the beating death of a widely despised record-company CEO. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1990
- R
In this gory and violent black comedy, a quartet of teenage zombies begin terrifying an employee at the local morgue until he figures out that they would rather party than eat people. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Scott Grimes, Cheryl Pollak, (more)
